The sun is a pretty formidable source of light - but we silly humans keep building buildings and using electricity to light the insides. "Daylight", an anonymous entry in the James Dyson Award competition, proposes a better way to get sunlight indoors, when simply enlarging windows or adding skylights won't do the trick. Reflectors shift their angles as the sun moves, directing the light indoors where it reflects off a white ceiling or wall - or even additional reflectors which take the place of light fixtures. The efficiency of using a little bit of electronic smarts plus low-power physical actuators to leverage a hugely powerful natural light source definitely appeals to the engineer (and greenie) in me - and hopefully will appeal to architects, too!
[via Core77]